


Tell Me Where All Past Years Are

by deskclutter



Category: Stardust (2007)
Genre: Cap'n Shakespeare, F/M, Happy Ending, Long-Distance, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2010-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dunstan and Una, between the setting of Tristran across the wall and his coronation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me Where All Past Years Are

**Author's Note:**

> What I basically did was rip details from the novel and transplant them over the movie in some freakish Frankenstein of a fic. Hopefully it doesn't kill it.

  
There once lived a man who owned all he needed to be happy. He was known in the village of Wall, which was his home village, as an upright and dependable young man. On the event of his latest birthday, his father had given him the lower corner of the family farmland, with part of the flock and a cottage of his own to go with it. He was well liked by his friends, and untroubled by financial difficulties. And, of course, there was a young lady.

One morning, the young lady returned to her mother, sobbing out her tale of woe before she stepped into the drawing room. Her mama, ripe as a tomato with fury but marginally less round, sailed out in her fine new temper to call on her friends and acquaintances. At the same time, young Mr. Monday, the son of old Mr. Monday who was the shopkeeper, brought news from his morning stroll up by the wall of poor old Mr. Bromios, who had guarded the gap in the wall for decades and had never been bested by high spirited young lads until that very night by the young lady's very own young man! The two stories made their separate ways around the village like a pair of mangy cats until they finally met in a snarling mess of half truths and rumours. "Oh, Daisy!" cried the young lady's mother on hearing of the wild and previously unknown nightly behaviour of her daughter's former paramour. "You are indeed blessed to have escaped from that match!"

The hubbub died down quickly enough when the villagers noticed not without a little disappointment that the young man seemed little changed and not at all prone to fits of madness on moonlit nights as Bridget Forester had predicted darkly. Nine months after his misadventure, however, as young Miss Hempstock was preparing to become young Mrs. Monday, the fuss resurrected itself with the arrival of a basket on the doorstep of the little cottage at the end of the Thorne homestead. Daisy thanked her stars yet again, and looked upon handsome Mr. Monday with bright and loving eyes on their wedding day.

The village watched the young man raise his son alone, and shook their heads. "What an eccentric man!" they exclaimed to themselves, and for years and years after, a familiar cautionary tale warning against going past Mr. Bromios and into the world beyond the wall recounted the sad plight of Dunstan Thorne.

 

There are no cats in Dunstan Thorne's cottage, other than the occasional passing stray. This is not the fault of the cats – rather, it is not a cat's fault that its ear is similar to the ear that belongs to young Daisy Hempstock, which is to say that both are small, pretty ears that do not resemble enough the delicate and slightly furred curve of pale cartilage (that twitches when kissed) belonging to a gypsy princess in disguise.

 

Tristran Thorne has only asked his father about his mother once:

"Father!" he had pleaded, taunts from the village children burning bright red spots in his cheeks. "Please, tell me about my mother!"

Tristran has never forgotten his father's face in that instant; colour leeched itself from his cheekbones and his nose, and the bridge between his eyebrows, which narrowed into a painful little furrow. His mouth had pinched into an awful, thin black line, lonely and small against his white countenance. His eyes took on a terrible colour Tristran had never seen before: they had become the eyes of a man who had lost a vital chance at some high enlightenment or emotion, or perhaps one who had glimpsed the chance at it and had never had the chance at all. If despair had a colour, Tristran could swear he saw that shade of it that day, in his father's eyes.

"I shall tell you when you're older," Dunstan had said quietly, and Tristran, chastened, nodded and fled.

 

As the chill frost of winter melts into the crisp shyness of the spring breeze, Una watches the ground for the snowdrops as her mistress harries her caravan down the roads of Stormhold. She does it pointedly to provoke the old witch, who has never forgotten the precious glass snowdrop her foolish slattern of a slave gave away to a dunce of a boy who will lose it, or break it, or worse.

Dunstan is not only a tool to Una, but it comforts her to think so, for Hope is a curse that lies in her breast and would kill her if she let it. Yes, it is best to deny it.

 

Without Mr. Bromios guarding the gap in the wall, there was nevertheless surprisingly little traffic from Wall into Stormhold or the other way around, which is to say that no one wandered through until a hairy little man climbed gingerly over the worn jags of old brick with a bulging sack of letters on his back just as Mr. and Mrs. Monday were passing by along with their daughter Isabella and without their son Humphrey, who was walking out with his betrothed wife Victoria Forester at that moment. "Good morning," said the hairy gentleman to Mrs. Monday, who promptly fainted dead away.

"What on _earth_ are you?" cried Isabella Monday in horror.

"Postman from Stormhold," said the hairy little man. "Temp'rarily, seeing as how magical post can't come over. Most inconvenient."

"Good gracious," said Mr. Monday, who had listened carefully to Mr. Bromios' wine-soaked tale of fire-breathing women and dangerous creatures. Being a creature whose nature was deeply rooted in both caution and generosity, he carefully asked if he could be of any assistance after the event of bringing his wife back to their home where she could recuperate from her sudden dizzy spell.

"_Papa_!" cried Isabella in delighted mix of revulsion and shock.

"Cert'nly," said the hairy little man, swinging the rather large sack over his back. "If you'd be kind enough to take this bag of invitations to the post office for me, I'm to deliver this message pers'nally to a Mr. Dunstan Thorne.

Solemnly, Mr. Monday instructed Isabella to take her mother and mincingly accepted the bag of letters. As Daisy Monday began to regain her humours, he gave the little man directions to Dunstan Thorne's cottage, and helped his wife home, whereupon he poured three fingers of medicinal brandy for the both of them before setting out for the post office.

"But, Papa, _why_?" cried Isabella, who was going through the stage in life where half her sentences were italicised and the other half were cried out in dramatic tones.

"Because," her papa replied sternly, "who knows what sort of deadly magics he might have been hiding beneath those voluminous whiskers?"

But the hairy gentleman did no magic in the village of Wall as he waited for the replies to the coronation ceremony in Stormhold. He left as he had entered, with a far smaller bag, for he had a companion to carry the other half.

"I always knew he would end up going back one day," Tom Forester nodded wisely at his wife. "You mark my word, Bridget, I knew."

"Who was it, then, who told me he would forget that faerie woman he must have met and settle down with a nice village girl by the time young Tristran celebrated his first birthday, Tom Forester?" retorted Mrs. Forester scathingly.

"Hmph," said Tom.

On the way to the fortress of Stormhold, which wasn't as long as Dunstan had thought it would be with the help of a certain Captain Shakespeare – who had winked broadly at the hairy gentleman and made some remark about a Fellowship of the Castle, and who had regaled Dunstan Thorne with tales of his son's adventures – Mr. Thorne periodically fingered his very short letter from Tristran, and took out the envelope to peer at often.

"That isn't young Tristran's chickenscratch," noted the Captain.

"It most certainly is not," said Dunstan wryly, for he had long despaired of Tristran's penmanship. "Tell me, Captain, have you ever had the feeling of being born a second time?"

Shakespeare mulled this over. "Hmm," he said. "Perhaps when we have had a spectacular storm, one where the poetry of it fairly emanates off the lightning."

"I can pinpoint the moment," said Dunstan thoughtfully. "Here's a story for your repertoire. Imagine a man, having fallen in love with a woman and never thinking to find correspondence from her ever to come his way due to unfortunate circumstance, discovering a babe in a basket on his doorstep nine months almost to the day of his meeting with the woman. Imagine his surprise at both the child and the letter in the basket, and wondering with great trepidation and half felt joy what his name will look like in her hand. Imagine his disappointment as he realizes she did not write his name, though he is quite certain she knows it. Imagine that she wrote instead the name of their son, and that the man might perhaps have been irrationally jealous of his own son, despite loving him deeply at the same time."

"It is most certainly an appealing story!" said Shakespeare. "The subtle poignancy of bittersweet parting, and the hint of star-crossed lovers. But how does it end, Mr. Thorne?"

"She wrote my name," Dunstan replied simply.

 

When he arrived, he was hastily shown into a room that was rather cluttered with maps and measuring implements, and various curios that he had never seen before, such as a large, polished green egg, and a plush velvet hat with small unicorns literally treading across its rim in silver coating. A large window let sunlight in to dance on the tiled floor, sending gold sparkles and glints of blue against the ceiling. At the very end of the large room a regal young woman stood, silently observing the wall. An ear twitched carefully before she turned to look at him.

There was a silence as they faced each other, ballooning as a rather unwieldy white elephant. The weight of the sixteen years they had not seen one another sank as an anchor, robbing Dunstan's tongue of any possible idea or phrase he could say. He shifted surreptitiously. "Lady…" he began, and stopped.

"Did you know," she said suddenly, her voice vibrant and strong, almost an assault on his ears that was saved only by the many times he had recalled it in his dreams. She was staring at a point beyond him. "Did you know that I did not reveal all of myself to you when we last met?"

"Oh," said Dunstan, derailed. He had not expected her to say that, and he suddenly felt foolish. Of course she must no longer want him; it had been sixteen years. "Didn't you?"

"No," said Una.

"Ah," said Dunstan. He had never been comfortable with this kind of conversation, even when he had been directing it at Daisy Hempstock so many years before. "You look well," he said honestly instead. "You haven't changed a bit."

"Unlike yourself," was her swift rejoinder.

He nodded ruefully. So that was that, then.

"Well, then, Dunstan Thorne," she said, drawing herself up and looking him full in the eye. "Knowing that I will age slower than you, and most likely bury you when I look half your age, will you still consent to be my consort?"

He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"A princess of Stormhold does not repeat herself," she said, not quite ungently. "Seventeen years ago I extracted from you a promise to free me and become my consort. You have fulfilled the first part of the promise with our son, but if you so wish I will release you from the second, for it is quite unlikely that you knew what you were promising when you made it."

He gazed at her face, so fierce and so beautiful as she had been seventeen years before, but brighter and greater than the captive princess he had fallen in love with as a boy. "I…will," he said, half of him surprised at himself and the other half feeling as though some ancient puzzle had finally been put right.

"Good," she informed him. "Shall I tell you what I did not reveal to you before?"

"If you would like to," he said gravely.

She walked across the room to him, passing the defeated elephant, and the green egg, and the crimson hat, and the many, many maps. He bowed his head down so she could whisper in his ear all the sweet, romantic nonsense she had not told him during their lovemaking, the breath on his ear the only touch of her against his skin, and he knew Hope in that moment, not Hope as he had known it before, but rather Hope Fulfilled, which is the greatest of all treasures.

 

On the second night, Dunstan Thorne evaded poor Mr. Bromios yet again to slip carefully through the gap in the wall. It was almost an intoxication to remember her eyes, and her soft, silky skin, and the shine of her smile, so unlike the cold glint around her slender ankle.

Oh, that chain! Dunstan despised the very thought of it. It seemed so surmountable an obstacle, that thin, glimmering chain. On some occasions last night it had seemed so faded and pale a breath could puff it away as one put out a candle flame, but of course it could not be so easy. She was a princess, and it is only lost princes who save captive princesses, not poor farmers.

But he was not only a farmer, he thought as he fingered the cool glass of the snowdrop at his heart. He was Dunstan Thorne, who would overturn fairy tales, and win the heart of fair lady, if he had not done so already!

When he dashed down to the field, his mind was brimming with fiery thoughts and lofty ideals, but they turned to ash in his mouth, because the market was no longer there.

 

"Ah, but that is only a break in paragraphs, an intermission, a prelude to a pause!" said the good Captain, his eyes twinkling bright and mysterious. "Mr. Thorne, that is not an ending."

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The Mondays: this way Una gains her freedom when the Moon loses her daughter in the same week when two Mondays come together. It doesn't have to make complete sense.
> 
> 2) The hairy gentleman: I love the hairy gentleman and was saddened by his absence even moreso than the absence of a lion and unicorn fight.
> 
> 3) I wanted to fit in the Death whispering her secrets in his grizzled ear bit, but that would have ruined the flow and the ending.
> 
> 4) The Fellowship of the Castle: I liked that bit too.
> 
> 5) Go, and catch a falling star / Get with child a mandrake root / Tell me where all past years are / And who cleft the devil's foot
> 
> It's quoted at the beginning of the book, and I like this poem.


End file.
